Businesses, companies, and organizations (simply originators hereinafter) use bulk communications with their clients, suppliers, and other parties (simply recipients hereinafter) for a variety of reasons. Typically, such bulk communications are carried out using one of the following media: Surface Mail, Email, Facsimile, and Short Message Service (SMS) messages sent to recipients' mobile phones.
Originators of communications have different types of bulk communications with their recipients ranging from ad-hoc marketing communications through to recurring delivery of essential information such as invoices, statements, and reminder notices. Generally, these bulk communications have the following common elements:                A list of recipient information is provided separately, often needing to be extracted from a corporate database or accounting system;        A form of document template is used;        Data from the recipient list is merged, or overlaid, onto the template document; and        The final ‘merged’ document is delivered to the customer.        
Communication with recipients can originate from different departments or entities of the originator and be carried out in different ways depending on the type of communication media being used. In carrying out these various communications, the originators use different interfaces and technology depending on whether originators are sending information out via Surface Mail, Email, Facsimile, or SMS. The originators may choose to host some or all of the technology required for the relevant communications in-house, but in other cases the originators may out-source the communications.
Mail merge software applications exist for generating address stickers for envelopes and for merging and printing letters. Originators may also have proprietary systems and printing departments set up in-house to manage surface mail merging. Mailing houses provide originators with the ability to outsource their surface mailing requirements. Generally, customized scripts are written to map data extracted from the originators' databases and overlay the extracted data onto pre-printed paper stock.
Facsimile (fax) machines have the capability to store lists and do bulk message delivery. Depending on the size of the communication, bulk emailing can be carried out using tools such as Microsoft Outlook. This application enables a user to merge data fields of a data repository into a Microsoft Word document and then email a merged document to a recipient list via its mail merge tools. Other software applications beside Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Word have similar functionality. For software solutions in this area, fax cards and fax print drivers, etc., must be installed on the network or the workstation that the software is installed. Businesses or companies also provide bulk fax and email services. Some require personalized documents for the different recipients to be supplied by the originators; others carry out merging of data for the originator. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and accounting software may also support the capability to email or fax from within the application or software package. However, this is usually geared to individual communications (i.e., send a single email or fax from within the package at a certain point within a business process), rather than allowing for a bulk personalisation and delivery.
Originators may adapt their systems to issue SMS messages via a carrier. Usually, this is done using ‘email to SMS’ type services that enable an email to be sent to a specified address, formatted in a given manner, and then forwarded on as an SMS message to a mobile phone. Originators may enable the bulk outsourcing of SMS messaging, but generally do not provide a capability, or support provision by third party products of a capability to merge personalized data from the same database as the other delivery mechanisms.
Limited, combined services exist, usually capable of forwarding emails to fax or to SMS. Amongst other things, these services do not provide formatting and merge functionality. Such services do not allow for specific formatting rules to be specified for the different delivery mechanisms whilst using the same recipient list and database, and do not support surface mail as one of the delivery options.
MessagingDirect (from ACI) offers e-Courier. E-Courier 1 is a direct electronic billing and payment solution. These tools seek to combine traditional direct business-to-business paper transactions with the speed, efficiency and flexibility of electronic delivery. Both also attempt to facilitate a streamlined business process through direct e-business: digitally signed, legally binding and securely delivered end-to-end e-transactions, such as bills, statements, invoices, confirmations, policies. The entire business process aims to be online, enabling e-transactions to flow through an electronic channel directly between businesses and their customers, partners and suppliers. The MessagingDirect system does not support a unified interface for email, Fax or Surface Mail delivery. The MessagingDirect product requires all recipients to enroll with the service.
MessageReach and Fax MailMERGE (from Xpedite) have different offerings for different media, but do not simultaneously personalize and deliver a single recipient list to multiple media.
Pulse Enterprise (from Esker Software) is another similar application, but does not incorporate escalation, is not offered as an ASP model (or as a Web Service), and does not support surface mail delivery. Pulse Enterprise also requires Fax cards, etc., to be installed along with the software. The company making use of Pulse Enterprise must install the software and hardware in their environment and manage Pulse Enterprise as well as all Fax, SMS, Email interfaces etc. Pulse Enterprise includes a General Document Recognition™ (GDR) component. General Document Recognition™ seeks to automate the conversion of text and print-stream data into multiple electronic formats and the processing and delivery of these documents to any receiving device.
Thus, a need clearly exists for an automated service that enables originators to use one bulk communications service with a single common interface and to re-use the same set of recipient data, so that bulk communications to recipients can be carried out via all existing, different media including Conventional or Surface Mail, Email, Fax and SMS (and any other new delivery media that might arise in the future). Further, a need clearly exists for an automated service that enables an originator to manage the delivery of messages to recipients based on each recipient's preference for receiving the information including how that information is delivered if unsuccessful on a first media, without the need for the originator to install and manage technology specific to a particular delivery type. Still further, a need exists for an automated service that can format and deliver data via a single interface to the full spectrum of delivery media (Fax, Email, SMS, Paper and Archiving) based on the recipients' preferences.